Eyes well up. How did I come to be?

I’ve never fitted in to a nice neat box.

Flow living for me is about collaboration, curiosity and creativity. It’s about encouraging a new noticing of the way the world is working by exploring through different lenses. It embraces the full lean into creativity to question, to seek adventure, to see the world differently and to do it in a way that enables others to learn and grow too. Its about connecting at a time of polarisation by feeling comfortable, even excited by the unknown.

It invites the authentic person to come out from behind the mask and wave to the world while doing a jig so that others feel the courage to peek out with difference. It calls for meeting Earth with humbleness as a human, and to think about everything else that exists within our small time here. It’s holding your own hand to say, yes, I’m improvising my way through life and aren’t we all?

But tangibly, what does it mean? For me, it means seeing in colour again, hearing in 360 degrees, playing again. I quit the commitment of paying London rent on a greying shoebox and started to exist within different worlds to scrimp, save and experience. I converted a van, my dreamboat, and go from working in muddy festival fields, to dorming it up in hostels across the world and then jump to housesit mansions with swimming pools in return for spending time with animals. Embarking on adventures with so many types of minds to learn different perspectives and experiences. And through sharing, we come together through our differences. This has a power.

And so, as I stood overlooking a valley in Mexico with my treasured arts council DYCP funding to actually listen with tears to the thousands of Monarch butterflies flap as a man tells me to encircle my ears with my palms to tune-in like an animal would, I realised I could understand the world so much more by exploring and learning from different communities and environments as opposed to sitting still and feeling stagnant, feeling SILOED. Last year was the first time I could really listen, really notice, and see first-hand in a joined up way how the world is changing and communities are responding. In living this way, whilst being conscious of my own priveliges and background, I get closer to understanding. From this, work becomes more authentic, more inclusive, more aware. Ideas come and grow into collaborations across borders, sectors, species. And in rejecting the grind, I feel my body and my mind thank me for not trying to slot in anymore. I get more out of this way of living than I ever did before, and because of that I can give more back.

And why am I sharing this? Because living this way is both a balance of choice, and of feeling unable to be part of having a ‘normal’ life. A balance of barrel scraping and confidence pretending to get the small amount of grants that enable this freedom to think and to question. I know many other creatives and people with chronic health conditions that are feeling undervalued in the ways that they too have had to bend to live. Why should the individual have to mould in silence and society not adapt? Only through speaking about it are we going to be able to make true, inclusive change for the future of our planet and the people within it. The only way to advocate is to share our vulnerabilities, and our stories.

So to anyone else trying and failing at fitting into a society that too is failing. I say, lean into what makes you you. And to those that hold the keys to the office kingdoms, what can you do to make work more accessible? What small choices can you make to try to make your world a bit better for the people within it? What steps can you make to help foster empathy, with both people and the environment? How can we embrace difference more?

Lets experiment in creating roles that enable people to question. How can we give the ‘creative brain’, the ‘thinker’ , ‘the observer’, the ‘neurodivergent brain’ the standing that it deserves so that we can cultivate ideas to help us out of the mess we find ourselves in? Difference is power, and people are exhausting themselves by clawing at closed doors or from trying to be a b flat thinker in a c major world. The brightest stars are burnt out, and with that so is the potential of making incredible change.

Improvising and exploring and having empathy are the most important things we can do with this time we have. Flowing with what surrounds us. Staying as curious as we can.